This invention relates to real-time storyboarding using a graphical user interface to automatically parse a video data signal and browse within the parsed video data signal. Specifically, this invention is directed toward systems and methods that generate a real-time storyboard on a distributed network, such as the World Wide Web (WWW), and a graphical user interface tool for fast video analysis of both compressed and uncompressed video images for automatic parsing and browsing.
A “document” is no longer merely a conventional paper product. Rather, a “document” now encompasses electronic multimedia files which can include audio, video and animations, in addition to text and images. Nevertheless, people still prefer to print or have a hard copy of the multimedia document for various reasons, including portability and ease of reading. For space-dependent information, such as text and images, printing is easy.
Video is becoming an important element in many applications, such as multimedia, news broadcasting, video conferencing and education. A plethora of scholars, including political scientists, physicians and historians, study video or multimedia documents as a primary source of educational or research material. By using traditional techniques, such as video recorders, one is able to view the material of interest, or fast forward and/or rewind to sections deemed important. However, since video content is generally extremely vague, multimedia and video cannot be handled as efficiently as text. For example, most multimedia and video application systems rely on interactive user input to compile the necessary representative static data.